What the State fears most: those who reveal the truth about the State

Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute has written a terrific commentary about the those who tell the truth about the State. The latest of these truth tellers is Edward Snowden, former CIA agent and a true patriot to many Americans, who revealed the shocking extent of the National Security Agencies domestic spy capabilities and operations. Hopefully his sacrifice will move the Congress to repeal the Patriot Act and dismantle the developing global surveillance state that is developing. Here are a few excerpts from Higgs’ excellent commentary.

Why does the U.S. government go to such extraordinary lengths to discredit, punish, and ruin persons such as Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, and—next in line, no doubt—Edward Snowden? The government alleges that these persons give aid and comfort to the nation’s enemies and endanger national security. In truth, however, these persons only “crime” is to tell the truth to the public about what the U.S. government is doing. By telling the truth about especially important matters, they endanger only the state, by exposing its lies and its hidden crimes for the world to see.

The rulers can continue to plunder and bully the great mass of people only as long as the people believe the Biggest of All Big Lies, which is that the government seeks to be, and is, their essential protector and general benefactor. The Ellsbergs, Assanges, and Snowdens, rare as they are, demonstrate that the government’s pose as protector and benefactor is nothing but a ruse to hide its essential nature and functioning. The only protection the rulers aim to provide us is the kind that a shepherd provides his sheep—protection from anything that interferes with his exclusive ability to determine how and when the sheep will be sheared and slaughtered.

The rulers would have us believe that our enemies are such shadowy characters as a Vietnamese peasant hugging an AK-47 in a jungle 8,000 miles away, an Iraqi scientist ginning up bottle-rocket WMDs in a hidden underground laboratory, and a starving Pashtun goat herder creeping about in Waziristan plotting to bomb you, your children, and your dogs and cats. These fantasies of danger to the American people are so far-fetched that one suspects anyone who takes them seriously of mental incapacity.

Meanwhile, with people’s minds bewitched by the Tallest of Tall Tales, their real enemies go about their extortion, robbery, abuse, and contempt of intelligence in plain sight in every city, village, and borough in the land, and the masses take all these crimes to be nothing worth noting, but only “how it is.”

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About MikeA resident of the “30 square miles surrounded by reality,” I spend most of my time teaching economics and statistics to undergraduate students. I enjoy, naturally, economics and business, but also science (I was once an astronomical observatory assistant), politics, photography, food, travel and sports.
Madison has grown quite a bit since 1978 when Governor Lee Dreyfus made that remark. According to Wikipedia, Madison is 67.3 square miles of land and 16 square miles of water. Visit https://thisgotmyattention.wordpress.com/about/ for one of my favorite views of the isthmus. Or, why not come visit us! http://visitmadison.com

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Hayek on “social justice”

"Justice is an attribute of individual action. I can be just or unjust toward my fellow man. But the conception of a "social justice", to expect from an impersonal process which nobody can control to bring about a just result, is not only a meaningless conception, it's completely impossible."
http://goo.gl/JBP1HC